A communication network consists of multiple communication nodes which are called Network Elements (NE). An Element Management System (EMS) is configured to manage the NEs and provide a management function for configuration, failure, performance and the like.
A basic unit for configuring a business rule is called an object, and is called a Managed Object (MO) in a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard. The object consists of a group of attributes, and the MOs with the same attribute set are collectively called a Managed Object Class (MOC). A specific object instance is called a Managed Object Instance (MOI). The core of EMS configuration management is a network manager configuration data model, including MOCs and their association relations, and a model of a communication network is presented in a form of MO tree at present. The core of NE configuration management is an NE configuration data model, which is presented in a form of table in a relational database at present.
A configuration management function is to configure MO data for the NE by a network manager and update the data to the NE to validate a manageable object represented by MO on a managed network. In the NE, configuration data acquired from the network manager and presented in the form of MOI is stored in a memory in the form of MO tree, and then the network manager configuration data in the form of MOI is converted into NE configuration data according to a corresponding relation between the network manager configuration data model and the NE configuration data model.
A configuration data synchronization manner between the EMS and the NE includes a total data synchronization manner and an incremental data synchronization manner, and a total data synchronization process and an incremental data synchronization process are independent from each other. In the incremental data synchronization manner, a conventional universal method is that the EMS executes own defined comparison rule, forms an incremental data file by MOIs involved in current operation and corresponding operation identifiers in the form of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and transmits the incremental data file to the NE to notify the NE to perform incremental data synchronization. After the NE acquires the incremental data file, the NE parses the incremental data file to obtain the MOIs, looks up corresponding locations of the MOIs one by one in the MO tree, and adds, deletes or modifies the MOIs according to the operation identifiers of the MOIs.
The above method has the defects as follows: when the EMS modifies a single attribute of an object which satisfies a condition, it is necessary to transmit all the MOIs satisfying the condition to the NE. It is needed within the NE to look up the locations of all the MOIs issued by the network manager in the MO tree, and to process one by one, during which the lookup may be repeated for a class of MOIs with higher relevancy, thus resulting in low efficiency.